Rosslyn Chapel was founded in 1446 by Sir William St Clair at Roslin, south of Edinburgh. He intended a collegiate church where priests would celebrate Mass and pray for the founder, his family, and the dead. Construction continued for decades but never achieved the large cruciform plan sometimes associated with the project. The surviving building is essentially the richly developed choir, with a lower chapel beneath part of it. Its compact scale concentrates an extraordinary amount of late medieval carved stone.

Masons covered pillars, arches, bosses, capitals, window surrounds, and vaults with biblical figures, foliage, animals, angels, stars, and moral imagery. The famous Apprentice Pillar acquired a dramatic legend about a jealous master murdering the gifted apprentice who carved it, but the story is much later than the stonework. Some modern writers have claimed Templar, Masonic, or even pre-Columbian American meanings for particular carvings. These theories remain speculative and should not replace the chapel's documented Christian, funerary, and collegiate context.

The Scottish Reformation of 1560 ended Catholic collegiate worship. Altars were removed, and the chapel experienced periods of neglect and occasional damage, although the St Clair family retained ownership. During the seventeenth century, conflict and changing religious practice affected the building. Romantic antiquarian interest grew in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Queen Victoria's visit in 1842 helped encourage repair, and the chapel was rededicated for Scottish Episcopal worship in 1862 after work supported by the family.

Later conservation sometimes created new problems. A twentieth-century internal coating intended to protect the stone trapped moisture and contributed to damp conditions. From the 1990s, a large temporary canopy allowed the roof and walls to dry while masons repaired stone, roofs, drainage, and windows. The Rosslyn Chapel Trust, established by the Earl of Rosslyn, manages conservation and visitors. Publication of The Da Vinci Code and the film adaptation brought a sharp rise in tourism, requiring a new visitor center and controlled access.

Rosslyn remains a consecrated church as well as a heritage attraction. Its carvings are valuable because they survive in their architectural setting, where repetition, placement, light, and liturgy shape meaning. Repairs and replacement stones must be separated from medieval work, and popular mysteries can be discussed without presenting them as fact. The chapel's long story connects aristocratic commemoration, late Gothic craftsmanship, Reformation, antiquarian restoration, conservation science, worship, and mass tourism. Its strongest historical appeal lies in this documented complexity rather than in claims of a hidden code.